[rojas]

13th has a very low total, but has been very unlucky with some of the draws.

1998 and 1999 Clay County teams would have been ranked around the middle of the pack, but drew Paintsville and Madison Central.

2000 Corbin was an excellent team that had the bad luck of drawing Russellville and Tony Key, but were still able to play with them. Of all the teams that they could have gotten, that literally might have been the worst because of Key's size.

2009 Corbin and 2010 Corbin were in the same boat as some of the early Clay County teams. Tough luck in drawing Louisville Eastern (at least five division one players, some high majors, and a 6th man who played TE at Illinois) and Scott County (four or five division one players, including Ge'lawn Guyn [Cincinnati], Chad Jackson [James Madison], Tamron Manning [Marshall], etc.).

2014 Clay County was a very solid, and highly underrated team entering the tournament, but only lost to eventual State Champion Covington Catholic by two points. Given their performance, I'd think that it'd be fair to say that they were capable of beating a number of teams in the field.


Unless I'm missing someone, that is what you would safely say was six of the top eight or nine teams in the era losing tough first round match-ups. A rather high percentage that it'd be interesting to see if other regions would match. I say that hoping I'm not overlooking too many strong South Laurel teams (didn't get to see the 2016 team).


In short-- I don't think that the 13th was as weak as it appears given bad matchups for the best representatives; the small sample size (20 years); that shortly after winning State, South Laurel came into the fold via realignment; and that some of the regions best years (late 80's and early to mid 90's Clay County, Corbin, and Harlan teams) are some of the first excluded.

The lack of seeding at the Sweet 16 has really hurt the 13th Region.